Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.
~W.J. Cameron
When fall arrives or even when it stays — and I know I’m late to the gate here, just starting to cook and blog after having been away — I am somehow a bit gratified to give up eating lightly. Tomato sandwiches, rosé wine, bean salads, grilled fish, cold pasta, and such, are beautiful and sooo happy in their space and time. But after a while (actually 3 months exactly), I’m tired of things that feel like they were all made on the grill or on the cutting board or that must be served cold. I long for cool mornings to bake, cold nights to dream of dutch ovens, ginormous vats of steaming soup, and even for foods that take on the season, so to say. Things like apple pies, mashed potatoes and gravy, beefy stews, and, of course anything cranberry. Salads, then, feel better not when they’re heavy, but when they are now only somewhat weighted. They might be said to contain an air of gravitas (rather than all that summer frivolity), if you could use those words with food. (I would.) Instead of all freshly light out of the garden, I’m now interested in a mix of dark, cool weather greens and roasted or sautéed orange and brown fall vegetables finished off with the last of the woody herbs from my garden and graced with a vinaigrette not made with lemon juice.
Frequent readers might remember when I went out on a Thanksgiving menu limb last year and offered the salad below to either begin the meal or to serve as a side. Is there anyone who doesn’t think Thanksgiving gets a little heavy with all that creamy-crispy, butter-laden fare? I mean, how many things can we make with butter anyway? We might all do with a little greenery–hello, fiber– right? (In fact, my old blogging friend Mary O’Brien had chimed in on fb to say that no one in HER family would ever ask anyone to bring a salad! And, you know, she’s got a point. But. There’s always that But.)
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